Alvar the Kingmaker (31 page)

Our lord King always gives with one hand as he takes with the other.
Alvar could only smile wryly as he recalled the conversation that morning, when Edgar told him that he had shown ‘
Kindness beyond reckoning in looking after the widow we know as Swytha. You have overseen Brock’s lands since his death, and now I gift those lands to you.’

Alvar filled his lungs and held his breath. He exhaled in a slow, controlled, silent whistle. He had let himself believe that Mid-Wessex was the sweetener against Oswald’s continued presence at Worcester, perhaps even Edgar’s acknowledgement that Evesham was a crime scene. But Ramsey? This was moving the fight to a new field.

Oswald stood up and went to speak to the scribes. They waved their arms in a flurry of black sleeves and pen feathers.

Helmstan spoke out of the side of his mouth. “They do not understand. Ramsey is in the fenland that once belonged to Danish Mercia. It should come to you, my lord.”

If it was even within Brandon’s gift, being in disputed territory. Alvar said, “Oh, they understand. Believe that, if you believe naught else in your time on earth.”

Edgar leaned forward while Dunstan spoke. He nodded, and sat back.

Dunstan stood up to address the council. Sixty-two now, he stood less steadily and kept one hand always on the table, but his back remained straight and he held his head erect. “My lords, we of the Church can only give thanks that our most righteous and God-fearing king and his wom…” He coughed and his jowls wobbled. “And his queen, help us to grow strong. Who among us d-does not also long for a mark of a strong England? Truly, I say to you all…”

Wulfgar said, “Look over there; I would dearly like to take Oswald’s smirk and shove it up his arse.”

Alvar said, “You will have to get behind me and wait your turn. God forgive me but I see this not as their gift to God but their threat to me. Bishop Athelwold barely misses stepping on my toes on his way to Peterborough, but Oswald takes a knife and sticks it deep into my gut while he cuts the grass at Ramsey.”

He stood up to push his chair back. He looked around the room, sighed and sat back down. “Stamp my feet and tell my woes. But to whom?”

Wulfgar touched his arm. “My lord?”

“Brock is dead and Swytha has taken herself off to a nunnery. Even if Beorn were here he would goad me into a fight before he would lead me out of one.” He looked at Helmstan. “And the only other…”

Helmstan raised his head. “Yes my lord?”

And the only other one who would soothe him was forbidden to him, for he had crossed a line that would see him in hell. “Naught.” He clicked his fingers at a serving-boy. “We will have drinks here. Wulfgar, you must remember that as one of my leading thegns you do not have to fetch your own ale now.” He rested his legs on the empty seat opposite. Edgar was right; this morning he took his seat as lord of all Mercia, from Cheshire to Worcestershire, and as lord of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Mid-Wessex. He should rest at that and be glad. He raised his cup and drank a silent toast to all those who had once gathered there. He caught the queen’s gaze. “There sits another who has little bliss in her heart.”

Helmstan said, “It was hard for her to lose her beloved Leof, and I would wish that fever on no-one, never mind a little child, but do you see how she now behaves with the other atheling?”

The queen was sitting with her ladies and had her youngest son, Æthelred, on her lap. He wailed and squirmed, but Alfreda held him clamped.

“When my Siferth was barely more than a cradle-child he would find many things to do that need little thought but a lot of daring. Æthelred is nearly three; he should be off his mother’s knee.”

Alvar slapped Helmstan on the back, harder than he meant to. “Forgive me my friend, but you must know how dull it can be for childless men to listen to such tales.”

He stood up and did not answer when Helmstan said, “Then why do you go to the queen…”

As he approached, Alfreda gave Alvar an empty smile and moved along the bench to make room for him. He sat down and fiddled with his garnet ring. He was tempted to pick the child up, but he knew that where once he could have scooped Leof onto his lap, he must leave Æthelred with his mother, for the boy would tolerate no other.

“He misses his godfather Brock,” she said.

“You are kind to speak of my loss before your own. We all miss my brother,” he said, “As you and yours grieve for Leof.” He touched her cheek. “So soon after your father’s death, it was an unkind blow.”

Alfreda allowed her tears to fall. She fingered her necklace. “I am now to be known as the lady of all nuns and worship must be said in my name, yet death stalks us all, and prayer is no shield against loss.”

Alvar stared at the necklace, a circle of coloured glass beads in groups of three, separated by gold triangles, set with garnets. At the centre of the circlet hung a gold round, engraved with animal symbols and set with blue glass. There was nothing wrong with displaying the trappings of wealth, certainly no bishop he knew ever dressed shabbily, but there was something about the look of the queen that sat incongruously with her new title as defender of nuns, and at odds with her mourning. It was as if she had become so used to the potency of her feminine allure that she no longer knew when best to display it and when to minimise it.

“I had heard that Athelwold’s book named you thus. But I will not lie and say that I will ever find time to read his work.”

“It seems there is never enough time…” She controlled a sob, but could not continue.

He reached forward and placed his hand on her knee. “My lady, I cannot give the answers you seek, for only God can do that. But as winter comes near, summer will always follow and you must look to the living; your son needs his mother, and your king needs his queen. And you are not friendless.”

She squeezed his hand and the boy on her lap said, “No.
My
muv-muv.”

She said, “You are a true and kind man, my lord.”

He sat back and smiled. “Do not tell my foes, for were we all to become friends, what a salt-less meal life would become.”

“Your foes are my foes,” she said. “Do not forget that Brandon stood by and did nothing while I was broken by his brother’s hands. Oswald and Dunstan have no love for women, for are we not but weak sinners? Of the churchmen, only Athelwold has been kind to me. And yet Edgar loves us all, whichever side we stand. I am closer to him than any and even I do not understand how he does it.”

Alvar lifted one side of his mouth into half a smile and puffed air through his nostrils. “I could tell you, but there is a bitter feel in my mouth this day, and my words might be soured from it. Let me say this; that he gives us all a reason to love him and he deals, mostly, with even hands. Yet not all are in thrall to him. Our neighbours to the west and north…”

The queen touched his arm with her free hand. “Oh yes, this is something of which I had half heard. My lord, will you tell me? My husband came to our bed last night in a sore temper and I could not lift his mood.”

He said, “I do not know if anyone can. In Wales, the sons of Idwal are still fighting each other. One of them is now king of Gwynedd and is a mean, dark little man with many foes. He holds one of his brothers in a cell, which I hear has not pleased his nephew. And last year, the king of the Isles, whose name is Maccus, harried Gwynedd and now his brother, Gothfrith, has done the same.”

“But why would the Welsh with all their fighting make Edgar so wroth?”

Alvar shook his head. Edgar was indignant that any man would dare fight so close to English lands, and had spoken to Alvar of his desire to broker peace in return for gratitude, or even servitude, from these neighbouring lands. But it was the effrontery of the Scots which had turned the king’s mood sour. “It is not only the Welsh that vex him, though they do not help. In Scotland, the son of the king of Strathclyde has killed the king of Alba, which is nobody’s business but their own, but…”

“Yes?” She shifted the wriggling Æthelred from one knee to the other, but the child would not be appeased, and whined until she lifted him up so that he could stand on her knees. He bent his legs and bounced up and down until she winced.

“But there is a man, Kenneth, who is kin to the slain king of Alba. He moved in when both kingdoms were weakened by the fighting and now claims to be king of both Alba and Strathclyde. He thinks this makes him mighty enough to have some of Northumbria to boot.” He forbore to mention that Kenneth had also taken the son of Beorn’s deputy as a hostage. The queen had burdens enough, without learning of yet another displaced son.

“And Northumbria belongs to Edgar. Little wonder, then, that my husband would not be soothed last night. I began to think that he no longer finds me fair.”

“Lady, only madness or a sickness of the soul would keep a man from craving you.”

Her hand went to her veil. She forced the child to sit back down on her lap, and sat upright. She smoothed her dress over the curve of her bosom. “I thank you for your kind words, my lord.”

“I speak the truth; that is all.” He looked over his shoulder. “I must go back. Edgar will not let these things rest and we have much to speak about.”

“Ah, has this something to do with Dunstan’s great show; a second king-making? Can such a thing be done, do you think?”

He grinned and said, “Edgar wills it, Dunstan craves it, and I say let it be done. Therefore, it will, indeed, be done.”

He slapped his hand down on her knee and the child Æthelred’s lips quivered.

“Lady, let me not be guilty of the sin of pride, but Dunstan’s show will be merely the gilding of the hilt. It is I who will put the edge on the blade.” He glanced back at Oswald’s carrion flock. “And it will be keen enough to shear any black feathers and stop their flight.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Oh, yes? I feel there is more to this tale than you are willing to give me.”

Dunstan’s sermon was over, and several lords stood up to stretch their legs. Husbands came to talk to their wives, and Alvar winked at Alfreda.

He stood up and shoved his thumbs under his belt. He raised his voice and said, “If you want to see real strength, lady, look not to the west with Dunstan next Pentecost, but let your eyes follow me to the north.”

Chapter Fourteen AD973

Bath 

The sun shone in a cloudless sky and cast beams of radiance through the window lights. Dunstan smiled with satisfaction; God had blessed the day. The archbishop breathed in deeply, joyful to be in this place. The abbey, rebuilt by King Offa, had been the only thing about which he and the debauched late king had agreed; the Fairchild had told Dunstan that the abbey church was marvellously built. Now, the community was being reorganised by a devout anchorite who had been busy transforming it into a strict Benedictine chapter, and Dunstan was elated. On his way to the abbey, the archbishop had stopped briefly to marvel at the ruins of the Roman baths. The magnificent upright columns were all that was left of the building though the springs remained. He knew that many of his countrymen still shied away from the place. He was scornful of such superstition, passed on through the generations from ignorant pagan Saxon invaders who had come from the old country and been frightened beyond rational explanation by the towering walls and stone buildings, so alien to their culture but so representative of the aspirations of the Roman Empire. Empire. He liked the concept. Edgar had been negotiating and threatening in order to coerce all the kings of neighbouring lands to stop fighting each other and bow to his higher authority, and what better way to symbolise that than to stage this coronation? Edgar’s first had been a rushed affair, not nearly public enough, and Dunstan was determined that this time the folk would witness a spectacle. He would give the scribes something to fill the pages of their chronicle, the history of their people which had been begun on the orders of that other great king, Alfred.

Edgar looked at once magnificent and humble dressed in his alb, a simple white gown. Dunstan nodded approvingly, glad that he had persuaded the youngster to adopt the clothing of the newly baptised at Whitsun, for was this not a form of initiation, or rebirth? Edgar’s blond curls, lively as ever, softened his face, which was not so boyish now, lined as it was from his habit of bringing his eyebrows closer together whenever he was concentrating. And he was indeed no longer a boy but a man, thirty years old. This fact also pleased Dunstan, who delighted in the coincidence that he was placing the crown of the empire on the head of a king who was the same age as a clergyman must be ere he acceded to a bishopric. From either side came the sweet sound of the boys singing the psalms, and every now and again, a fresh waft of fragrance would billow across from where the archdeacon stood, swinging the incense holder. The crowd stood in ecstatic silence, smiling blissfully. Dunstan’s spirit was almost replete.

The only irritation, like a bur caught in his sandal, was the sight of the king’s wife and her bastard child. The woman had dressed herself in homespun, but Dunstan was sure, even with his limited knowledge of women, that her cheeks were unnaturally pink, and he was certain it was no accident that there was just enough hair on show beneath her veil that no man could be in any doubt as to her dark-haired beauty.

He breathed in deeply, listened for a moment to the mellifluous voices, and offered up one more silent prayer of thanks. The presence of that woman would not distract him from his task. Edgar might have dubious taste in women, but his devotion to the Church and the cause was unquestionable. This ceremony would mean as much to him as it did to Dunstan.